Communications handling centers, such as call centers, are well known in the art. Telephone call centers, for example, are often used as telemarketing sales centers, customer service or support providers, or to otherwise automatically distribute received calls. In recent years focus has been on improving call center efficiency by maximizing the number of calls an agent can handle as well as minimizing the duration of calls. As a result, the business processes and capabilities of call centers have evolved and been substantially improved through the use of technology. For example, call centers are now able to handle communications in a variety of different media formats such as web chats, faxes, and/or other work objects turning them into full fledged contact centers.
Additionally, while contact centers once were provided by operators such as local utility companies or small mail order providers, they are now being employed by some of the largest and most diversified entities in the world. For example, world-wide credit card companies, banks, major energy providers, and retailers are some of the large and often diversified operators of complex contact centers.
In response to this growth in functionality, contact center agents have had to expand their skill sets from traditional telephone communications into a variety of other contact points in order to provide service across all available platforms. Additionally, with the growing scope complexity of the services provided by the contact center, each communication has a number of handling requirements, depending on, for example, the nature of the call, the originating area, and even the language of the call. However, since every agent cannot be trained to handle all of the various communications that a call center may receive, individual agents are often only able to handle one or more designated types of communications. For example, agents are typically trained to process communications related to a certain subject matter, such as sales, support, and/or in certain languages.
The success of a contact center relies on enabling the right people to handle the right communication load at the right time. Currently, a contact center supervisor or other person must manually move agents into and out of workgroups through the day at specific times to assure availability of resources at the right times and in the right places. This process is tedious and difficult to manage, and thereby prone to error.